06 January 2018 2:39 AM

Saturday PS: Shakedown on the railways

THE blame game for those socking great train fare rises has been most entertaining. So far, names in the frame have included fat-cat rail bosses, the rail unions and the hapless Department for Transport.

It is certain that some sort of explanation is in order for the grotesque disparity between train fares in Britain and on the continent. UK commuters spend more than five times as much of their salary on rail travel than other European travellers.

But one, to me, rather obvious suggestion has yet to be aired (apologies if it has and I missed it). This is, quite simply, that the travelling public is being shaken down for what amounts to unemployment benefit for large numbers of people.

You don’t believe me? Take a trip back to 2011, when Sir Roy McNulty, distinguished business leader, delivered a report on value for money on British railways commissioned by the Government. He found that, compared with continental train services, costs on the British system ought to be 20 to 30 per cent lower and that there was a 40 per cent efficiency gap with comparable European operators.

The biggest chunk of any business cost is usually labour. So what has happened to the railway workforce since 2011? Well, it’s shrunk. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the total was 52,000 in 2011 and by 2017 it had been slashed to…51,000.

A not-very-swingeing cut of less than two per cent, almost certainly within the margin of error and nowhere near sufficient to hit Sir Roy’s costs and efficiency targets. As I say, the passenger is paying for disguised unemployment via disguised unemployment benefits, i.e. the inflation-busting pay rises.

Over the longer perspective, the railway and Tube workforce has certainly come down. I am indebted for the following figures to Jack Eaton and Colin Gill, authors of The Trade Union Directory (Pluto Press;1981). At that time, British Rail was definitely a union closed-shop and London Underground almost certainly was as well, so membership figures make a reasonable proxy for the workforce.

The NUR, fore-runner to the RMT, had 180,000 members, ASLEF had 27,478 and the white-collar union, the TSSA, had 69,573, a total of 277,051, or more than five times the current ONS figure. My point is simply that the pace of productivity improvement seems to have ground to a halt.

Furthermore, how reliable are the current figures? Aside from those I have already quoted is an ONS category for rail construction and maintenance. It currently totals just 6,000, a plunge of more than 100 per cent on the 13,000 given in 2011.

Do we really believe that the figures have taken this sort of hit at a time when endless rail schemes are being launched, or is it more likely that large numbers have been reclassified into other categories?

Also, the 6,000 figure is hard to square with the RMT’s claim of 16,000 members in Network Rail.

I suspect as well that catering personnel, both on and off the trains, have been reclassified, as will have been all those rail union members who used to work for BR’s hotels division (Gleneagles, the Great Western Royal, the Great Northern, and the rest). I wonder also how many in the ONS category “transport and distribution clerks and assistants” (63,000 now and a similar 62,000 in 2011) work for railway companies.

Ultimately, whether you believe you are subsidising disguised unemployment is up to you. It could be that you think all those people warning us all that rain can make platforms slippery, or assuring us that they will “sort” any terrorist emergency are performing vital jobs.

I don’t, and I think Ministers are well aware of the fact. Public transport, like quango-land and NHS administration, has become an employer of last resort.

Miscellany on Saturday

WHEN will British polite society decide what it thinks about prostitution? Is it “sex work”, a perfectly respectable trade, albeit one suited to other people’s children (mainly daughters) rather than one’s own? Or is it time to stamp it out by criminalising not the (mainly) women concerned but the men who buy their services, following the example of those beacons of enlightened thinking such as Sweden and, er, Northern Ireland?

Apparently keen to follow Scott Fitzgerald’s dictum - “The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function” – we, or rather they, manage to think both things. Thus we need legal brothels, health checks for those involved in prostitution plus employment rights and social benefits.

Meanwhile, their customers ought to be prosecuted.

Imagine if drugs were legalised, the pushers (sorry, “drug workers”) had been assured their career choice was absolutely fine by the rest of us, with the minor caveat that anyone trying to avail themselves of the drug workers’ services will have their collar felt.

- The January edition of Cosmopolitan interviews some part-time escorts (like “courtesan”, escort is an amiable bourgeois euphemism) and comes down pretty solidly on the side of “sex work” being a respectable career choice. No happy-hooker narrative is ever complete without reference to the “supportive” and “understanding” (i.e. insane) boyfriend, and so it is in one case here:

“I know I’m lucky to be with him; he could have very easily walked away.”

- Perhaps I can be just the latest to express delight at further confirmation of the huge financial bath that the big supermarkets are taking on self-service tills in terms of a huge rise in shoplifting. Thought you were so clever, getting the customers to do the work so you could fire your lowly-paid staff. Didn’t you - greedballs?

- Stephen Glover was in fine form in Thursday’s edition of the Daily Mail, commenting on the bizarre case of the chef run out of town after making a not entirely serious comment on “social” (it isn’t) media about adding cheese to the dish of a supposedly-vegan diner.

To be fair, he said, the chef may not have been entirely without fault, albeit nothing could excuse the slavering Twitter mob:

“Possibly Miss Goodman, 47, is a bit of a prima donna. She may have been reared watching too many highly strung and foul-mouthed chefs on television. Besides, she was born in Rome.”